


Risks and Consequences

by White Queen Writes (fhartz91)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Fluff, Ice Skating, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, isn't all that suspicious, snow when there shouldn't be, when a demon and an angel take to the street in skates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/White%20Queen%20Writes
Summary: Crowley surprises Aziraphale with a surprise skating excursion on Christmas night during a suspicious snowstorm.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	Risks and Consequences

“You do enjoy shoving me headfirst out of my comfort zones. Don’t you, my dear?” Aziraphale asks, warily watching his husband strap a stiff black boot to his foot. 

“Poppycock,” Crowley grumbles, struggling to unknot long laces he accidentally macramed while attempting to navigate the rows of eyelets and hooks. “Consider this an _adventure_.”

“This is certifiable! You do know that?”

“How? You’re an _angel!_ What on Earth could happen to you?”

“A great many things, I imagine,” Aziraphale replies. It’s a thin response. Crowley can tell Aziraphale has a thought, a _vivid_ one, of something plausible. 

Something that has him concerned. 

Crowley stops messing with the skate and looks into Aziraphale’s face. Aziraphale's gaze ducks and dodges, bouncing from his hands to his knees to other random things inside the confines of Crowley’s Bentley. But Aziraphale can’t avoid Crowley’s gaze, nor Crowley himself, for too long. “Sometimes, I feel as if, one of these days, I’m going to snap my fingers, and nothing will happen. Heaven will have found a way to make me mortal or …”

“Or abandoned you altogether?”

Aziraphale nods sadly. “Yes.”

“I get those thoughts, too, sometimes,” Crowley admits, going back to fixing his angel’s skate. “Too often, really. Which probably explains why you use your magic so rarely, and I use mine all the time.”

“You’re always double-checking."

“And you’d rather not know.”

“Losing my powers wouldn’t be the worst part. Inconvenient, yes, but not terrible. Abandoned by Heaven …” Aziraphale's words drift off, but their meaning lingers, clinging to Crowley's heart and building like the snow outside their windows.

Crowley winks at his husband, trying to get him to smile, to laugh, to roll his eyes and groan _Oh Lord!_ “It’s not so bad ..." 

“... once you get used to it. So you keep telling me,” Aziraphale teases, gifting his husband with the tiniest of grins, gone all too swiftly. “Are you truly afraid of being abandoned by Hell?”

"Ngk ..." Crowley’s shoulders bounce a shrug back and forth as he thinks over his answer “... nah. Not really. They've already tried to exterminate me once, haven't they? It’s the consequences that come with it that would really suck: being mortal, having no powers, growing old …” Crowley’s eyes meet Aziraphale’s - melancholy blue eyes exposing those same fears, a subject his angel hasn’t felt comfortable bringing up before tonight. He still doesn’t seem comfortable with it, tight-lipped as an oyster. “But let’s not talk about that now,” Crowley suggests. “Tonight is for having ridiculous amounts of fun. Stirring up a little mayhem.”

“We’re going to get into trouble,” Aziraphale laments. “With the humans, I mean.”

“Nonsense. They'll never even know we were here."

“There are security cameras everywhere!”

“When was the last time you got caught doing anything on CCTV? It would be all over the Internet if you had! I'll fix it. You'll see.”

“By wasting another miracle? Or do you have a small army of rodents positioned on light poles, waiting to do your bidding?”

“ _Besides_ ,” Crowley continues, overlooking the jab at what was one of his more masterfully executed, if not elaborate, schemes, “I’m not sure this is actually illegal. As long as we abide by all traffic laws and posted speed limits.”

“Where did you even get this idea?”

“From YouTube. The youths do it - barrel down frozen roads wearing bicycle helmets and hockey skates.”

"You're getting your evil ideas from _children_?" Aziraphale tuts. “Aren’t _you_ supposed to be the bad influence? Not the other way around?”

“No shame in finding inspiration outside your own head.”

“Yes, well, I hope you skate better than you drive.”

“Oi! I am an excellent driver!”

“I know two rabbits and a squirrel who might disagree with you.”

“That wasn’t my fault! You’d think they’d know to get the Hell outta the way of a moving vehicle!”

“Speaking of which, we’re going to get hit by a car.”

“What car?” Crowley stops fiddling with Aziraphale’s skate to wipe down a fogged window and take a look around. Beneath the glow of the street lamps, he sees nothing but snow - a veil of flakes wafting down from the sky, pushed into swirls by the frigid wind. “No one’s out here! It’s three in the bloody morning after one of the worst storms London has had in _years!_ You’d have to be insane to be outside!”

“My thoughts exactly,” Aziraphale mutters. “Bit early for a storm like this though, isn’t it?”

“Uh … maybe,” Crowley says, abruptly returning to his task. 

“London isn’t due for snow until January.”

“Is that so? Strange.”

Aziraphale's brow furrows as he watches his husband focus intensely on basically nothing. “ _Crowley_ …”

“Wot?”

“Are you responsible for this?”

"Wot would make you think that?"

"Crowley. Look at me."

Crowley's head slowly lifts, eyes aimed everywhere but Aziraphale's face. At one point, he even closes them, assuming that, behind his dark lenses, Aziraphale won't notice. 

But Aziraphale does notice. Even if Crowley were speaking to him from a completely different room, Aziraphale would notice.

Because, for a demon, Crowley happens to be an atrocious liar.

“It’s Christmas night!" Crowley pleads, unable to hold back any longer. "The perfect time for a lock-yourself-indoors-and-get-sloshed sort of snowstorm, a'right?"

“So why are we not inside getting sloshed then?”

“Because this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while! And I was gettin' tired of waiting for Mother Nature to accommodate. Plus, with climate change and global warming, nothing's guaranteed, is it?” Crowley moves on from Aziraphale's right foot and begins sliding his reluctant left foot into its skate. “Live a little!” 

“I aim to live a _lot_ , which specifically requires avoiding activities such as this." Aziraphale pauses his complaining to watch Crowley work, beyond curious what was going on inside his husband's demonic mind when he hatched this plan. "So," he says, working through the mystery out loud, "you conjured up a snowstorm, froze the streets, are in the process of strapping these awful contraptions to my feet ... would you like to tell me why?”

"Do I have to?"

"It would be nice."

"I'm a demon. I'm not nice."

"Crowley ..."

“Alright! It's because I wanted us to be together like this." 

"Like what?"

Crowley sighs. "Like _humans_. And do the stupidly wonderful things humans do when they’re in love: take moonlit strolls, hold hands, kiss in the rain, all that sappy shite. Humans go skating at Christmas! It's, like, number three on their list of Yuletide activities. It's almost a requirement! Even if they can't stand steady in regular shoes, they go skating. And they cling to one another, and they laugh, and they kiss, and I … I didn't want to take the chance that if I waited, I might miss ..."

 _Nothing's guaranteed_ , Aziraphale thinks as he watches Crowley sink in on himself, head bowed over Aziraphale's feet, curling as if he wants to disappear. And Aziraphale begins to understand. 

Crowley has been a ball of anxious energy for as long as Aziraphale can remember. Aziraphale doesn't blame him. Crowley has been tiptoeing through minefields since the beginning - making innocent mistakes and paying huge prices for them. As supernatural entities, it's easy to get lulled into the false sense of security that nothing bad can happen to you. 

But that's not true. 

Not at all true.

Because even a demon and an angel with magical powers aren't anywhere near the top of the food chain.

Crowley destroying Ligur with Holy Water proved that.

So did his belief that Aziraphale had been extinguished by Hellfire.

The fact that he hadn't been didn't prove Crowley wrong.

Hellfire would most definitely annihilate his angel from the face of the planet.

Crowley and Aziraphale helped save Earth for humanity, but every day, the humans work harder and harder towards their own destruction.

Nothing's guaranteed. 

Not for anyone.

"If you don’t want to go skating, that’s fine. I know it’s risky. Probably the last way in the world you’d want to discorporate."

"I can think of worse ways," Aziraphale says with a chuckle.

"We can go back to your bookshop, make hot cocoa, listen to your gramophone or ... or something.”

“The biggest risk I’ve taken is sitting right here with me. And that’s worked out so far. For 6000 years, as a matter of fact. I don’t mind taking another one. Just … try not to let me fall.” 

“Just hold on tight.” Crowley scoots down the bench towards his husband and wraps his arms around him. “I promise I won’t let you fall.”


End file.
